Antimony Facts.

Nebuchadnezzar, of hanging gardens of Babylon fame, painted his palace yellow by using an Antimony- lead mix. Soon he went mad, sleeping outdoors in fields and eating grass like an Ox. Around that time Egyptian women, used antimony as mascara to decorate their faces. During medieval times, alchemist – not to mention Isaac Newton- grew obsessed with the sexual properties of Antimony. Some insisted that Antimony was the essence of femininity- so much so that the alchemical symbol of antimony became the general symbol for “Female.”

Antimony was also used as a laxative. Unlike modern laxatives antimony pills didn’t dissolve in the intestines, and the pills were considered so valuable that people rummaged through faecal matter to retrieve the pills. In some families the antimony pills were also passed down as family laxative heirloom.

In the 1930’s in China, a poor province decided to make money from antimony, since it was the most abundantly available resource there. But antimony coins are soft, easily rubbed away and toxic, all properties of bad money. The government soon withdrew the coins. Though worth just fractions of a cent then, these coins fetch thousands of dollars from collectors today.

Mozart is supposed to have died by taking too much antimony to combat a severe fever.

Today Antimony is used to make custom built acids. Antimony pentafluoride, (SbF5), with hydrofluoric acid (HF), produces an acid with a pH of -31. This acid is 100,000 billion billion billion times stronger than stomach acid (pH 1) and will eat through glass, and dissolve the hand that holds the glass too. (It is stored in special Teflon lined containers)

Ah! This reminds me, although unrelated to the topic. Prior to 1890, scientists judged acids and bases by tasting or dunking their fingers in them.

Tasting time

Today if you want to check the time at the middle of the night, you either have a backlit watch or may be a talking clock. Well back in the seventeenth century, when neither of that existed, M. de Villayer, a French inventor, tried using the sense of taste.

He designed a clock so arranged that when he reached for the hour hand at night, it guided him to a small container with a spice inserted in place of numbers, a different spice for every hour of the night. Even when he could not see the clock, he could always taste the time. 

Bycatch- An ecological nightmare.

When massive trawlers spread their nets, to catch those tasty shrimps or fish and haul them onboard they haul much more than shrimps. In fishing industry it is called a “bycatch”. An average shrimp-trawling operation throws 80 to 90 percent of the sea animals it captures overboard, dead or dying as bycatch. Shrimps account for only 2% of global seafood by weight, but shrimp trawling accounts for 33% of global bycatch. Most of us are unaware about this, since there exists no bycatch label on our sea food. How would you feel, if the shrimp you buy had this tag on it “13 KILOGRAMS OF OTHER SEA ANIMALS WERE KILLED AND TOSSED BACK INTO THE OCEAN FOR EVERY HALF KILO OF THIS SHRIMP”

While catching fish like tuna, among the other 145 species regularly caught the following endangered species meet their end. manta ray, devil ray, spotted skate, bignose shark, copper shark, Galapagos shark, sandbar shark, night shark, sand tiger shark, (great) white shark, hammerhead shark, spurdog fish, Cuban dogfish, bigeye thresher, mako, blue shark, wahoo, sailfish, bonito, longbill spearfish, lancet fish, grey triggerfish, needlefish, blue runner, black ruff, dolphin fish, bigeye cigarfish, porcupine fish, rainbow runner, common sea horse, Bermuda chub, opah, escolar, leerfish, tripletail, goosefish, monkfish, sunfish, Murray eel, pilotfish, black gemfish, bluefish, cassava fish, red drum, greater amberjack, yellowtail, common sea bream, puffer fish, loggerhead turtle, green turtle, leatherback turtle, hawksbill turtle, Kemp’s ridley turtle, Atlantic yellow-nosed albatross, Audouin’s gull, balearic shearwater, black-browed albatross, great black-backed gull, great shearwater, great-winged petrel, grey petrel, northern royal albatross, shy albatross, sooty shearwater, southern fulmar, Yelkouan shearwater, minke whale, sei whale, fin whale, common dolphin, northern right whale, pilot whale, humpback whale, beaked whale, killer whale, harbor porpoise, sperm whale, striped dolphin, Atlantic spotted dolphin, spinner dolphin, bottlenose dolphin, and goose-beaked whale.

So imagine, you have a plate of sushi. Now imagine this plate also holds all the animals that were killed for your sushi. That plate then would have to be 5 feet across to accommodate all the bycatch.

What colour are carrots?

Orange you say..? Well for 5,000 years, carrots have been anything but orange. The earliest use of carrots by humans are found in archeological sites in Afghanistan, those were purple in the outside and yellow inside. Next in line are the ancient Greeks who cultivated carrots for medicinal purposes and Roman physicians in

the 2nd century prescribed it for expelling wind. The Arab traders carried the carrot seed to Asia and Africa where it blossomed into various shades of purple, white, yellow, red, green and even black carrots. So where did our orange carrots come from? It was grown in 16th century Holland, patriotically bred to match the colour of the Dutch Royal House of Orange! By the 17th century, the Dutch were the main European producers of carrots and all modern varieties are descended from their four orange ones; Early Half long, Late Half Long, Scarlet and Long Orange. Well non-orange carrots are making a come back, so the next time you see a white , yellow, dark red or purple carrot, don't run away from it, they are natures natural breeds. Anyone for a ' Tiranga gajar halwa' ?

What is the capital city of Thailand?

Krung Thep (pronounced Grung Tape). What happened to Bangkok then ! Well Thai's haven't used

the word Bangkok for nearly 200 years now. Only ignorant foreigners and their encyclopedias use it. Bangkok was a small fishing village until King Rama I moved there in 1782 and renamed it 'Krung Thep'. Although Krung Thep is used for all daily purposes its official full name is ' Krungthep Mahanakhon Amorn Rattanakosin Mahintara Yudthaya Mahadilok Pohp Noparat Rajathanee Bureerom Udomrajniwes Mahasatarn Amorn Pimarn Avaltarnsatit Sakatattiya Visanukram Prasit (quite a mouthful this one).

In Thai it's written as a single word with 152 letters. Krung Thep means 'City of Angels' (yes, the same as Los Angeles). Well if you still insist on using the word Bangkok, in Thai it means Village of Plums.(Well for

those curious, the official Thai name roughly translates as; Great city of Angels, the supreme repository of divine jewels, the great land unconquerable, the grand and prominent realm, the royal and delightful capital city full of nine noble gems, the highest royal dwelling and grand palace, the divine shelter and living place of the reincarnated spirits')

Anything for science.

One of the biggest hazards of deep sea diving is something called the ‘bends’. The air was breath is 80% nitrogen. Put the human body under pressure, and the nitrogen is transformed into tiny bubbles that migrate into the blood and tissues. If the pressure is changed too rapidly, as with a too quick ascent by a diver; the bubbles trapped within the body begin to fizz like a freshly opened soda bottle, clogging tiny blood vessels and depriving cells of oxygen and causing so excruciating pain that sufferers are prone to bend in agony. A great deal of what we know about surviving at extremes is owed to extraordinary father and son team of John Scott and J.B.S. Haldane. Haldane’s gift to diving was to work the rest intervals necessary to manage an ascent from the depths without getting the bends. With Admiralty funding, JBS acquired a decompression chamber that he called the ‘pressure pot.’ This was a metal cylinder in which three people could sit at a time and could be sealed and subjected to tests of various types. Volunteers were required to sit in ice water while breathing ‘aberrant atmosphere’ or subjected to rapid changes or pressure. In one experiment, Haldane simulated a dangerously hasty ascent and the dental fillings in his teeth exploded. It is said that every experiment ended with someone having seizures, vomiting or bleeding. The chamber was virtually soundproof, so the only way for occupants to signal distress was to tap insistently on the chamber wall or to hold up notes on the small window. Once while poisoning himself with elevated levels of oxygen, Haldane had a fit so severe that he crushed several vertebrae. Collapsed lungs were a routine hazard. Perforated eardrums were quite common. Haldane in one of his essays writes “ the drum generally heals up; and if the hole remains in it, although one is somewhat deaf, on can blow tobacco smoke out of the ear in question, which is a social accomplishment.” It was not just Haldane, but even his colleagues and family were subjects of his experiments. Sent on a simulated descent, his wife had a fit that lasted 13 minutes. When at last she stopped bouncing across the floor, she was helped on her feet and sent home to cook dinner. Haldane happily employed anyone who happened to be around and on one occasion a former prime minister of Spain, Juan Negrin. Dr Negrin complained afterward of minor tingling and ‘curious velvety sensation on the lips’ Dr Negrin was lucky, a similar experiment with oxygen deprivation left Haldane without feeling his buttocks and lower spine for six years.

 

Adapted from Bill Bryson’s “A short history of nearly everything”

Who has more hair: you or a chimpanzee?

Both chimps and humans have the same number of hair follicles about 5 million. However, the human hair is thinner and more transparent than the hair of other primates.Hence, although we have equal number of hair, the chimps look hairier. We have lost our fur and no one knows why for sure, there are many theories

floating around (and you can cough out your own theory too, no one will mind). But I would like to agree to the one proposed by Darwin, 'Sexual Selection' . Darwin believed that as we humans evolved, our ancestors

chose partners with lesser and lesser hair and the hairy ones finally lost out. We see this even today, where our fascination for that smooth, hairless female skin makes the women spend painful hours waxing in a parlour. Similarly, we men have to spend time everyday in front of the mirror, to satisfy the women's need for clean shaven men. Now again no one knows why men retained facial hair, but for this I have my own theory

(all brickbats for me, not Darwin) I believe, our ancestral women were much more tolerant towards men with facial hair than men were towards women. May be after a day of hunting the woolly mammoth, men wanted to feel something much smoother! The present day women though have lost that tolerance and I am sent right back to the shaving mirror, even if a stub of hair protrudes from my face!

Elementary elements.

Two of the rarest natural elements on earth are Astatine and Francium. Astatine is so rare, that it is practically unstudied. It has a name and a place on the periodic table, but nothing else. Francium is so rare that it is thought that at any given moment there may be fewer than twenty francium atoms on earth.

Astatine is the only element whose discovery was confirmed by a non-primate. Emilio Segre had identified Astatine in 1939 and injected it into a guinea pig to study it. Because, astatine is below iodine in the periodic table, the body thinks it to be iodine and handles it as such. So in the guinea pig, it was selectively filtered and concentrated by the rodents thyroid gland. Pretty neat trick!

I know the above elements like many other in the periodic table are quite obscure, but that does not mean obscure elements come in trace quantity. Take for example cerium, there is more of it on earth than copper. There is more neodymium and lanthanum than cobalt or nitrogen. Not surprised yet. Praseodymium, samarium, gadolinium and dysprosium are more abundant than tin. 

Does wearing sunglasses cause anaemia?

Yes it can, and to tell you how it does I need to introduce to you two nutrients. 

1. Folic Acid; it is one of the vitamin in the B complex group. Among it's many functions one very important is the role it plays in manufacture of red blood cells (RBC's are small cell's in your blood that transport oxygen, Anaemia is a fancy name for their deficiency)

2. Vitamin D; Body produces its own vitamin D from cholesterol in the presence of ultraviolet light (UV).

Like you can see, our body needs the UV light for Vitamin D production, but the same UV light is quite deadly for Folic acid and can destroy it. So the body has to hit a balance between the UV light it receives, not too much not too less. To maintain this balance it pulls a pretty neat trick. 

Introducing Melanin; Melanin is a pigment that gives our skin its colour, most importantly it is body's natural sunscreen, blocking the UV rays. The amount of Melanin is controlled by the boss of all glands,the Pituitary. Whenever you are exposed to sunlight, the Pituitary gland goes into an overdrive, cranking up melanin production to protect the body's Folic Acid reserves. When you come into a shady area, it reduces melanin production to keep Vitamin D manufacture unaffected (which needs UV). So how does the pituitary, which is located in a dark corner of the brain, know whether there is sunshine or not? It has its own spy-cam,

your eyes. When sunlight falls on the optic nerve, it triggers the pituitary to produce melanin or reduce it when there is no sunlight. So when you wear those fancy sunglasses and walk in sunlight, your pituitary thinks

that you are still in the shade. Melanin production is still at the shade levels. However, the UV light is now destroying your Folic acid en masse. Over a period, your Folic acid reserves deplete, which leads to a fall

in RBC production leading to anaemia. Phew! So next time you think you have anaemia, and pop in that iron supplement, try popping out those Ray-Ban's. Your doctor never told you this did he/she?

What's wrong with my cotton shirt ?

For all its virtues, cotton is the preferred choice of material for most of our clothing. I even purchased a few shirts, which had a label proudly displaying “100% Organic Cotton.” Similarly, it feels good when I know; that the paper I use has “XX% recycled fibre in it.” Despite all these feel good labels, it’s a marketing gimmick after all. By trumpeting the narrow virtues of the product, we easily miss the big picture and miss the numerous negative impacts of our purchase. My Cotton shirt was indeed organic, the farmer who grew the cotton, did not use pesticide on his crop. Cotton crop alone accounts for 10% of the worlds pesticide. The organophosphates (which cause central nervous system damage in humans) that they spray, to control bugs and weeds, ends up in streams and rivers. Given this damage, the benefits of Organic cotton are indeed laudable. Then there is the downside. Cotton is a very thirsty crop; it took about 2.5 tonnes of water to make the cotton for my shirt. The shirts I purchased had various hues. Cotton yarn is bleached, dyed and finished with industrial chemicals that include chromium, chlorine and formaldehyde, each a toxin in its own sense. Cotton, resists absorbing dye, so when a dyed yarn is rinsed, a large amount rinses into the factory wastewater, which is pumped into our local rivers. These dyes harbour carcinogens- hence workers in dye plants have unusually high rates of leukaemia. Similarly, various products make claims on being healthy or environmentally friendly based on a single attribute (fried snacks do not become healthy just because they have zero transfat or no cholesterol). Indeed nothing made industrially can be utterly green or healthy only relatively so. When my wife explained to me on how a drug discovery is made, I realised the immense amount of research that goes into such a find. The care taken to learn about the impact of the molecule on humans, its metabolism in the body and the time taken for it to be eliminated from our system is truly commendable. However, how much research actually goes into studying what happens to the eliminated molecule. These chemicals once eliminated do not just disappear. Take for example all those tiny doses of synthetic estrogens, found in birth control pills. Even though the human body excretes these estrogen compounds in the form of a metabolite, bacteria in sewage cleave the molecule and recreate the original compound. This estrogen, is known to “feminise” male fish (male fish stop making sperm and instead produce eggs). Similarly any of us who take antibiotics or use antibiotic soap add, it to the 11,000 tons of antibiotics used annually by animal farms.

To know our shopping impact, I recommend the site www.goodguide.com. Though mostly focused on US and European products, we will find many products we used in India reviewed. Use it in making an informed purchase, make a difference to your health and environment. 

Ridges on the edges

Take a coin and look at the edge; can you see the ridges. Those ridges are the invention or innovation of Sir Isaac Newton. After all the laws and discoveries had made Newton famous, he was appointed as Warden of the Royal Mint in 1696. Counterfeiting of currency was rampant during those days. Newton implemented a harsh regime to deter counterfeiting, which included hanging and quartering of convicts.

Many coins were made of precious metal, and people used to shave the edge of coins to collect the metal. To prevent this Newton introduced the milled edges on coins and is still followed today. In recognition of Newton’s contribution, the British £ 2 coin issued in 1997 had the phrase “Standing on the shoulders of giants” around its milled edge. These words are taken from a letter that Newton sent to fellow scientist Robert Hooke, in which he said “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants” 

He saved millions and he killed millions…

Nitrogen is a very important element for plants and abundant in the atmosphere. But this nitrogen is pretty inert and hardly available for plants. So when someone invented a process to make nitrogen react at an industrial scale and make a vital compound, he pretty much changed the face of agriculture. The process was of manufacturing Ammonia, a precursor for all fertilizers and the person who invented it was a German, Fritz Haber. Our textbooks immortalize him by teaching us the Haber process of manufacturing ammonia, but this is the story of Haber’s dark side. Although Haber’s process saved millions of people from starvation, Haber cared little about fertilizers. He had pursued cheap ammonia to help Germany build nitrogen explosives during the First World War. His murderous inventions were, not appreciated in his family and more so by his wife Clara Immerwahr, who constantly pleaded with Haber to give up his projects. Clara was the first woman to earn a Ph.D from the prestigious university of Breslau. She supported Haber by translating manuscripts into English and providing technical support for his nitrogen projects. But she refused to help on the bromine projects, because she was aware that the project was meant to develop chemical warfare (which was banned by the Hague Pact). In 1915, Germany tried to shell the Russian army with xylyl bromide, but the temperature in Russia was so cold that the compound froze solid. Haber, abandoned bromine and adopted its cousin chlorine. Haber had replaced bromine with three Chlorine compounds. Grunkreuz ( green cross), blukreuz ( blue cross) and the blistering agent gelbkreuz ( yellow cross) today infamous as mustard gas. The first attack at Ypres, had 5000 Frenchmen burned in a muddy trench. Horrified by her husband’s projects, she pleaded him to stop. When Haber, gave a dinner party on the success of the Ypres attack, Clara was so appalled that she shot herself in the chest, with Fritz’s army pistol. The very next day, without making any funeral arrangements for his wife, Haber left for the eastern front to carry out more attacks. Despite Haber’s chemicals, Germany lost the war and was denounced as a scoundrel nation. After the war in 1919 the 1918 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Haber for his process, but a year later he was charged as an international war criminal for prosecuting a campaign of chemical warfare. Humiliated at the huge repatriations Germany had to pay to the allies, Haber spent six futile years trying to extract dissolved gold from the oceans, so that he could pay the repatriations himself.

Haber had also invented an insecticide called Zyklon A. A German company tinkered with his formula after the war, to produce a more efficient second generation gas. Within years the Nazis took over Germany and were gassing millions of Jews with this second Generation gas- Zyklon B. Nazis exiled Haber, for being a Jew and he died in 1934 while travelling to England to seek refuge

Crash Course on Particle zoo…

In school we were taught about the proton, neutron and electron – which allegedly made up the basic structure of an atom. We were taught that these are the basic structure of all matter. Well, now that we are grown and no more in school, its time we learn some adult stuff. So here is the crash course, to start with.

Lets recap- We know that an atom has a nucleus, which contains protons and neutrons. Electrons go around them. We also know electrons are negatively charged and have negligible mass. Protons are positive and neutrons are neutral and have equal mass.

Our old friends’ electrons are not alone, they have 5 more brothers and physicists call them flavours. Electron, Muon and tau are negatively charged brothers and electron neutrino , muon neutrino and tau neutrino have no charge. Electrons are smaller than muons which are smaller than tauons. All six together are called ‘Leptons.’

Our other old friends, Proton and Neutrons are actually made of smaller particles. These smaller particles are called Quarks. Quarks come in six flavours. Up (u), down (d), charm (c), strange (s), top (t) and bottom (b).

Protons are made of 2 up quarks and one down quark. Neutrons are made of one up and 2 down quarks. Similarly various other particles are made up of a combination of these quarks. When a particle is made up of 2 quarks it is called a ‘Meson’. When it is made of 3 quarks it is a ‘Baryon’. Protons and neutrons are examples of baryons.

In terms of mass u & d are lighter than c & s, which are lighter than t & b.

Just one thing to remember, these 6 quarks, mentioned above also have an anti-quark each.

So the above are the 12 elementary particles that make up our universe, including you and me. Now for the four fundamental forces of nature, without which the zoo is not complete.

1. The strong force: The strongest force in nature, but has a very small range (just within the nucleus). This force holds the quark together and forms the protons and neutrons.

2. Electromagnetic force: Responsible for electromagnetic emission and absorption.

3. The weak force: It has a smaller range than the strong force. It is an important part of nuclear reactions

4. Gravitational force: He needs no introduction. This though is the weakest of all forces, but has an infinite range.

Now these forces are carried by the so called ‘force particles’ Gluons carry the strong force, photons carry the electromagnetic force and W and Z bosons carry the weak force. Though not a part of the standard model, Gravitons are suggested to carry Gravitational force.

Gluons and photons are massless, while rest of the elementary particles have mass. The reason for this was explained by the Higgs- boson particle. The so called ‘God Particle’ that is making news now and then. Scientists at CERN are trying to hunt it down to conclusively prove its existence. Thank you and hope you had a lovely time.

What is the difference between regular, quick cooking and instant oats

Oats that we eat as breakfast cereals are generally whole grains, and are also called groats. To make groats, the grain is roasted at a low temperature which inactivates the fat-splitting enzyme (else the grains would quickly turn rancid). This roasting also gives the grain greater integrity when cooking. The whole groats are then processed into various shapes, and all have nearly the same nutritional value. Most of the oats we buy are either steel-cut oats or rolled oats.

Steel cut oats are groats, which are cut into two to four pieces for faster cooking. Rolled oats are whole grains that are steamed to make them soft and then pressed between rollers to make them thin. The thinner the oats are rolled, the faster they rehydrate. Regular oats are about 0.8mm thick, “quick cooking” oats are 0.4mm thick and instant oats lesser than this.

Oats have several nutritional significance, that make them a highly recommended breakfast cereal. Oats contain a number of phenols that have anti-oxidant properties.

They are also rich in indigestible carbohydrates called beta-glucans, which absorb and store water. This beta-glucan property gives oatmeal its smooth, thick consistency. They also help lower our blood cholesterol levels. These, glucans are found mostly in the outer layers of the oat grain.

Oats do not have gluten-producing proteins, but are still avoided by people with gluten intolerance because many machines used to process oats are also used to process wheat and cross contamination cannot be necessarily avoided. 

Trivia: A German immigrant, named Ferdinand Schumacher, in late 19th Century developed rolled oats. Henry Cromwell neatly packed the oats for retail packaging, with cooking instructions. The brand was called “Quaker oats.”

When the Noble prizes were wrongly awarded.

In 1934, the well known Italian physicist, Enrico Fermi reported to the world that he had created element no 93. Fermi and his team claimed that by bombarding uranium samples with neutrons, they had not only created element 93 but other transuranic elements too. Fermi was awarded the Noble prize for his discovery. But in 1939, to everyone’s disbelief, two German scientist contradicted Fermi’s results. Fermi had not created transuranic elements, but rather discovered nuclear fission. Element 93, today called Neptunium (after planet Neptune) was finally discovered by Edwin McMillan and was awarded the Nobel Prize for his discovery in 1951. But the Noble prize was already awarded to Fermi for the discovering the transuranic elements. So rather than admit its mistake, the Swedish Academy, stubbornly rewarded McMillan only for investigating “the chemistry of the transuranic elements” 

The boy who got the first vaccine.

A young mother once bought to Louis Pasteur, her son, so mangled by a rabid dog that he could barely walk. The mother was in distress because those days the only result of such a bite would be certain death. Louis Pasteur (after whom pasteurisation is named) treated the boy with a rabies vaccine tested only on animals. Pasteur wasn’t a licensed doctor, and he administered the vaccine despite the threat of criminal prosecution if he failed. The vaccine worked and the boy lived. You may have heard this story before, but what happened next is probably much more moving. The boy’s name was Joseph Meister, and he grew up and became the groundskeeper for the Pasteur Institute. Poignantly, he was still the groundskeeper in 1940 when the German soldiers overran France. A company of German soldiers arrived at the Institute and one officer demanded that Meister, the man with the keys, open up Pasteur’s crypt so that he, the officer could view Pasteur’s bones. Meister committed suicide rather then be complicit in this act. 

The most interesting and the least ambitious living organisms on earth.

For me, the most interesting living organism on earth may give us a glimpse of how life may have evolved on earth. The creature is the ‘Slime mold’ formally called myxomycetes. When the environment is conducive to slime mold, they exist as single celled organisms like amoebas. However, when the conditions turn unfavourable, they crawl to a central gathering place and turn into a slug- much like a horror movie! The slug, the slowly chugs along to a slightly better exposed position and transforms itself yet again. This time it takes the form of a plant. Some of the cells, reconfigure themselves and move on top to the plant to form a bulb, known as the fruiting body. Inside the fruiting body are millions of spores that at the right moment are released into the wind, to spread out and become single-celled organisms, and continue the cycle all over again.

The least ambitious living creatures on earth (as per David Attenborough) are also the hardiest- Lichens. They grow anywhere from old buildings, to windy mountain tops and in the Arctic wasteland where nothing else but rocks exist. In Antarctica, where nothing grows, there exist 400 hundred types of Lichens. For a long time no one knew how lichens managed to grow on rocks, without any nourishment or without producing any seed. Now we know that Lichens are a partnership between fungi and algae. The fungi excretes acids that dissolve the surface of rocks, freeing minerals that the algae convert into food, sufficient for both. There are an astonishing twenty thousand species of lichens on earth, and they thrive in harsh environments. They grow very slowly, and if you spot one the size of a dinner plate they are “likely to be hundreds if not thousands of years old” according to Attenborough. We humans need a point, a goal or a desire to exist, but “life even at it simplest level occurs apparently just for its own sake” Attenborough adds.

Heavy water ( Noble prize for rat piss)

99.9 % of the Hydrogen in our Universe has a proton and an electron in its atom. But a few hydrogen atoms have an additional neutron, which make that hydrogen a wee bit heavier. This is deuterium, and any water, composed of this hydrogen is called heavy water. In early 1930’s Harold Urey discovered deuterium, a sure shot Nobel Prize winning discovery. Another scientist, named Gilbert Lewis decided to piggy back to this no-miss prize by investigating the biological effects of water made by deuterium. University of California at Berkley, where Lewis worked, had a well equipped physics department, which incidentally had the world’s largest supply of heavy water (a few ounces’s mixed with lots of normal water). Heavy water is very scarce, and the department’s head, Ernest O. Lawrence was reluctant to part with it. Lewis begged and finally Lawrence relented on the condition that Lewis gave it back after the experiments. After isolating the heavy water, he decided to give it to a mouse and see what happened. Heavy water cannot be metabolised by the body, hence the more you drink, the thirstier you feel. Lewis’s mouse, gulped down all the water in a few hours and ended up dead. The experiment was of course hardly Noble prize worthy; but Lawrence went ballistic when he learnt that a mouse had pissed away all his precious heavy water.
Gilbert, Lewis worked in the Chemistry department of University of California for over forty years and made it one of the best in the world. His biggest contribution to science is the discovery of how acids and bases work and react. It is said that no one has ever received more Nobel prize nominations than Lewis- and was probably the best scientist never to win a Nobel Prize.

A Virus that gets infected by a virus.

In 1992, a microbiologist named Timothy Rowbotham, was searching for the cause of a pneumonia outbreak in Bradford, England. During his hunt, he took some water from a hospital’s cooling tower and put it under a microscope. In this water he found a promising candidate; a sphere of bacterial size, sitting inside an amoeba. Rowbotham believed he had found a new bacterium and called it Bradfordcoccus. He then spent years trying to figure out if it was the cause of the pneumonia outbreak. Budget cuts then forced Rowbotham to abandon his study and close his lab in 1998. He handed over his samples to his French colleagues for storage. For five years ‘Bradfordcoccus’ languished in obscurity, until Bernard La Scola of Mediterranean University, decided to take another look at it. La Scola, found that Bradfordcoccus did not have the smooth surface of spherical bacteria. Instead it was made of made of interlocking plates and hair like protein threads were radiating from its outer shell. The only thing in nature with such shells and threads were viruses. Until then no one had known any virus which was as big as Bradfordcoccus, it was hundred times too big to be a virus. La Scola discovered that it reproduced by invading amoeba and forcing it to build copies of itself. Only viruses behave this way. La Scola, gave Bradfordcoccus a new name to reflect its viral nature- Mimivirus (in honour of its ability to mimic bacteria).Genetic study of Mimivirus, provided more surprises. It had 1,262 genes. It was as if someone took the genomes of flu, the cold, smallpox and hundred of other viruses and stuffed them all into one protein shell. It had more genes than some species of bacteria. Mimivirus, was breaking all the rules of the virus world. Scientist found Mimivirus, in the lungs of patients suffering from pneumonia, but they are unsure if it causes pneumonia or colonise in people who are already sick. Scientist also do not know what mimivirus do with all their genes. In 2008, La Scola discovered that Mimivirus can be infected by a virus of its own. This is the first time anyone has found a virus of a virus. We humans are a blend of mammal and virus. Remove our virus derived genes and we would be unable to reproduce. A mimivirus, in an amoeba, functions just like how a human cell would function, probably giving us a peek into how first life evolved on earth.

How to make brinjal fry less oily.

Brinjal, aubergine, mad apple, garden egg or eggplant these are the various common names for brinjal. Probably the many shapes, sizes and colours have contributed to this name. Despite all the varieties, all brinjals have a spongy interior, with many tiny air pockets between cells. When cooking the air pockets collapse and the flesh is consolidated into a creamy mass. Hence when cooking, as the air pockets break, a large brinjal shrinks into a small volume. Also these air pockets have another consequence, when frying brinjal, it soaks up large amount of oil making any brinjal dish very rich. Unless, you are cooking the Arabic Turkish dish “Imam bayaldi” (the priest fainted) which requires brinjal to be soaked in oil, cooks can employ two tricks to reduce the oil absorption. Precook the brinjal (microwaving will suffice), this breaks the air pockets or salt the brinjal, this draws water from the cell, into the air pockets.

On a totally unrelated note, I just remembered a very interesting fact. The bitterness of cucumber is caused by a bitter chemical called ‘cucurbitacins’. This is a defect in cucumber and such cucumbers are disposed. Amazingly the same chemical, cucurbitacin, gives ‘bitter gourd’ its prized trait- the bitter flavour!! Cucurbitacin, is a water soluble compound, and blanching bitter gourd, before cooking can reduce its bitterness to a large degree.

P.S. : Thank you Lloyd, for pointing out that dish was Turkish. Though the controversy on its origin still reverberates in kitchens around the middle east; Ill stick to Turkey until its conclusively proven otherwise.